‘I Used To Rub Mud On My Face’ And Five Other Bizarre Quotes From Rachel Dolezal’s New Memoir

"In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World" is just as crazy as she is.

Given how bizarre it is for a white woman to pretend to be Black for her own professional and personal gain; it perfectly makes sense that Rachel Dolezal’s new memoir In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World is just as crazy as she is.

Now calling herself Nkechi Amare Diallo, which in the Nigerian language of Igbo translates to “gift of god,” the scandal-ridden former NAACP leader and African-American Studies professor shared all aspects of her life including the factors that played into her identifying as “Black,” her past marriage to a Black man and how she believes that her racial transition is similar to those who are transgender.

Here’s a peek at some of the book’s most off-the-wall revelations:

At A Young Age, She Pretended To Be Black By Covering Herself In Mud

She wrote: “I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs. I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo … imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways … that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.”

Her Ex-Husband Said She Was “Too Black”

She wrote: That Kevin, an African-American man, “urged me to speak and act ‘whiter’ and often complained about my figure.” Adding, “I was a little too white Black for his tastes. Not only did he discourage me from wearing my braids or other Black hairstyles, he also dissuaded me from sitting in the sun, preferring my skin to be as pale as it could possibly be.”

When She Was A Child She Would Pick A Brown Crayon To Color Herself

“I usually picked a brown crayon rather than a peach one. Peach simply didn’t resonate with me,” Dolezal claims. She said the “feeling that I was somehow different from [my family] persisted. I felt black and saw myself as Black.”

Her Transitioning To Black Is Like Being Transgender

Dolezal claims her racial identity is not too different being transgender: “Just as a transgender person might be born male but identify as female, I wasn’t pretending to be something I wasn’t but expressing something I already was. I wasn’t passing as Black; I was Black, and there was no going back.”

She Really Relates To The Fictional Story of Miss Jane Pittman

“I could still relate to aspects of her struggle. I certainly wasn’t enslaved … but it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to call me an indentured servant.” She continued, “Miss Pittman’s plight and her perseverance resonated with me. I knew what it was like to be a child and have to work as hard as an adult, and how it felt to be used and abused. I also understood the pain that comes from being treated like less than a full human being … and the fortitude required to fight this sort of injustice.”

She Identifies As “Black” Not “African-American”

“When I tell people I still identify as Black, they want to know why,” she writes at the end of the book. “I explain that Black is the closest descriptive category that represents the essential essence of who I am.”

She adds: “For me, being Black isn’t playing dress-up. It’s nothing something I change in and out of or do only when it’s convenient. This is who I am.”

“For me, Blackness is more than a set of racialized physical features. It involves acknowledging our common human ancestry with roots in Africa.”